Slashdot Mirror
Australian Federal Police Raid Major ISPs
pflodo writes "The Australian (newspaper) has an article about Telstra the major Australian ISP and other 'declined to name' ISPs that have been raided by Australian Federal Police to 'seek the identity of particular subscribers' in relation to their activity and files stored on the ISP's servers. I imagine they will eventually raid some domestic homes and make a scapegoat of some unfortunate teenagers."
"According to sources, the wholesale value of the allegedly pirated music may be as high as $60 million"
Then again, the music could be mostly Backstreet Boys, Brittney Spears, and N'Sync, in which case the value of the music is closer to $60.
From the tone of this article it strikes me that the police suspect the ISPs of criminal complicity in regards to their subscriber's alleged actions.
Is this how it normally works down under?
Cheers,
-- RLJ
Sounds so Orwellian for an American groupie country. Whats going on?
Does anyone know if the ISP's were monitoring the users pipes? Or is this simply a case of 'If you left it in your user space on their machine you're up the creek sans paddle'?
Fnord.sig
Why would someone committing computer-related illegal activities store anything on their ISP's servers? That's just begging for the systems administrator to find it themselves, and report you for something (assuming it violates their ethics code).
One of the strongest truths in anything that isn't necessarily legal, or could be interpretted as not legal, is that you don't leave any evidence that others can control. If you're really smart, you leave no evidence at all, period, but if you do leave something, make sure that it is in your control, and your control alone.
The other thing that I'm shuddering about is the possible downtime effects that this has on everyone else who uses the equipment for fully legitimate purposes. Suddenly, the possibility of server outages, network outages, and other miscellaneous service problems ensue, especially if a federal entity decides that equipment itself is to be confinscated as evidence, and they don't take care to properly handle what mess they leave behind.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
It seems like the Aussies have taken a page or two from the US's "Big Book O' Terrorism" manual.
.au geeks that have lived in the US and would care to compare/contrast the two in terms of rights, both real and perceived?
Any
Does this mean I have to give up my downloaded copies of the 'Crocodile Hunter'?
What I want to know is, what exactly constitutes "copyrighted material" legally here in Australia.
I have a bunch of SNES ROM's and anime (series, music and movies) that have no licencing in Australia. I also have some PlayStation ISO's, same deal. The anime/game wasn't released in Australia (or in any PAL territory, with some of them), so the only way that I could get it was online.
If it were possible for me to have acquired this stuff another way, I'd have done it...
Is that kind of thing considered illegal?
Chasing child pr0n-ography - yep.
Keeping Australia free from terror - yep
Those sort of raids are all about upholding current laws
But chasing up a bunch of mp3 downloaders?
Pull the other leg, it plays JingleBells.mp3
Now they can read whats on your computer screen! Whats next? Roaming through college dormitories in search of students downloading music and porno when they aren't over 21 yet? Do we need to bring a legal fiasco back into the mix? Did those admins that knew what was being downloaded really deserve to be locked up instead?
Wow. Search warrents for allowing people to download music...hope it doesn't trickle down to everybody.
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
I prefer to call them the Federal Austrailian Police, or the FAP Squad. *fapfapfap*
Presumably, there could be some kind of ISP credit rating to add accountability and prevent consumers from rapidly switching ISPs to circumvent scrutiny. Privacy premium Internet access could be granted based on records of responsible online citizenship and satisfaction on the ISPs part that the subscriber wouldn't do anything illegal and get them into trouble.
Would it be possible to convince ISPs to implement such an 'Iron Curtain' feature or would it qualify as aiding terrorists, like purchasing narcotics does? *sigh*
My guess is that these dollar figure likely assume that every copy of a song downloaded results in a lost record sale so the record labels can cry "boo-hoo" all the way to the bank. However, just because I have the Rocky theme on my hard drive doesn't mean that I would have run out to the store and plunked down $13 bucks for the CD otherwise.
<a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>
From the American Library Associations website: http://www.ala.org/alonline/news/2003/030224.html# santafe I was horrified to read that a man was hamdcuffed and brought in for perfectly harmless (but anti-Bush) chat in a library. Read the article and shiver. This story along with the Patriot Act II http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/02200 3Winslow/022003winslow.html has me very scared for my basic rights. These scenarios are coming home fast, it's good to watch Australia and Britan to see what's in store.
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
"Authorities in [your country name here] today raided several warehouses, looking for beer making components in a widespread crackdown on home-brew that several large consortiums claim is responsible for annual corporate loses in the millions."
"Authorities in [your country name here] today raided several warehouses, looking for bolts of fabric in a widespread crackdown on home-made garments that several large consortiums claim is responsible for annual corporate loses in the millions."
"Authorities in [your country name here] today raided several warehouses, looking for metal forging tools and raw materials in a widespread crackdown on home-made bicycles that several large consortiums claim is responsible for annual corporate loses in the millions."
And keep in mind that your tax monies are paying for the police to take action to support these corporations as they reach further and further into your pockets - and your life. Think this is all a reach? Think again...
The AFP (Australian Federal Police) is the Australian Equivelant of the FBI.
Also ASIO is the Australian Equivelant of the CIA.
I always wanted to work for the AFP or ASIO. But its too hard to get in, and you don't get paid enough....
D.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
From the Article: FEDERAL police have executed search warrants on Telstra and internet company Eftel in one of Australia's largest investigations into alleged music piracy, which could be worth up to $60 million.
Wow... $60 million!
Assuming the price of a CD is $20, it means that the pirate has an MP3 collection of equivalent to 3,000,000 CDs!
Assuming each CD has 10 songs on it, then the pirate has 30 million MP3s!
Assuming each MP3 is about 5 megs... then the amount of storage required is 150TB!
Did they raid Kazaa's ISP literally... or is this just one journalist's idea of sprucing up what should have been a normal IP-infringement case?
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
Hrmmm, that sounds a bit dodgy to me...
Lets think about it, assuming each song is worth $5 (a bit generous but let's be nice...), that makes around 12 million songs. With each song being around 3 MB, that'd be 36,000,000 MB... which is about 34 TB.
Now you can't tell me that any ISP lets customers have that much storage, and they would probably notice if someone, or a small group, was contributing to 34 TB of traffic.
Sounds like someone might be overestimating by a bit don't you think?
- proton
I work for a QLD govt department that DOES take computers and servers for evidence. If somebody's committed a crime, too bad. Investigation takes precedence.
My father was accused of having child porn on his hard drive. The police took the hard drive. It took him 3 years to get it returned. They don't care.
Copyright violation in Australia is a civil offence in Australia, unless you sell the stuff. Search for the word "civil" here.
I know this with a fair amount of certainty, as I was on the end of a similar search warrant during the "drink or die" bust. At the time I was totally mystified as to why, after telling me they were going to search my work place for "copyright violations" and having a search warrant that said they could look for anything illegal under Australia law, they took absolutely no interest in the various CD collections we have, nor did they search any of the workstations for illegal software.
It turned out the target was a guy who used to work here and who did (briefly) have an IRC chat with drink or die after it had been infiltrated. That was how they got our IP. The cops were interested in IRC logs mainly, but I had cleaned up the servers ages ago. His house was later searched and the fed's did find his collection of 200 odd pirated movies. But it was just a hobby - he did not sell anything. I am presuming that is why he has not been charged.
It is a weird hobby if you ask me. It costs more here in Australia to download & burn a movie then it does to hire it, a lot more in fact.
Anyway, there has to be more to this than was reported in the article. For the police to be involved someone must be suspected of selling, or somehow otherwise getting monetary gain out of illegally distributing copyrighted material. Australia's copyright laws may sound lame from what I have said, but if someone is found to of broken the criminal law it won't be a slap on the wrist. They will end up in jail.
Is it possible the MP3 story is a cover for an ongoing investigation into child pr0n ? Perhaps that's what the AFP are actually after but they don't want to tip off the crims, they go to ground very quickly.
There was that story on the news in Australia last night about concern for the whereabouts of a child depicted in a porn photo, those photos don't get out unless someone gets busted. These raids could be a result of that. Just a thought.
-- INTX Grouch. http://www.midnightblue.net
When I worked at a major carrier in Australia as a security admin, we had some on staff known as 'LELU' - which from recollection stands for Law Enforcement Lliason Unit. These were the people whom the different law enforcement groups would approach with warrants and requests for subscriber info. Then LELU in turn would approach the security geeks and say 'we need to know which subscriber was on IP address x.x.x.x at 10.30pm GMT+11'.
Not once do I recall a 'raid' of our subscriber info. The LELU process seemed to be a good mechanism for law agencies to work with the techs at the organisation.
Man watching 6 MSCE's around a sun box, looks alot like the opening scene's of 2001:space odyssey...
I do have a hard time grasping that, mostly because of its extreme variance from the truth.
I mean, I don't even know how to rebut that. Its so painfully, blatantly obvious that large corporations get preferential treatment in nearly all matters, vs. private citizens (and yes, drug dealers). Tell me, when's the last time you heard about a corporate office tower being raided at 4 a.m. with flashbangs and shotguns?
Sorry, not insightful.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
--I don't download mp3s or movies, so we'll get that out of the way FIRST.
When I was a kid, you had a clear cut choice in the record store, and that's ALL we had really was records. There was some reel to reel tape action, but basically it was records and the am radio. You could get EITHER an album on 33 size OR a 45 that had two tunes on it. I can't tell you how much of the albums were wasted space, so a lot of 45 "singles" got sold, even though the song on the flipside sucked.
Downloading and swapping accomplishes what the customer HAS ALWAYS WANTED but these morons REFUSE to get it. People do NOT want to pay for crap, it's called BUNDLING. They don't want to pay for CRAP they don't want.
If I go to the car dealer and order a new car, I got the choice to decide on my accessories. If I go to get a new bicycle, I got a CHOICE whether or not I want blinking lights on it, electronic turn signals, baskets, whatever, I can GET what I want. No fenders? sure. With mainstream commercial music you got NO choice. You can't easily preview, you can't find anything that isn't on the approved list, and if you get suckered into buying some "disc" you got no idea how much of that disc has anything you want on it or even if it will even play in your player!
Oh, listen to the radio to decide, because the radio will provide you a way to preview? No it won't, they play the same 40 top songs and have since I was a kid in grade school. NOTHING HAS CHANGED IN FACT IT GOT WORSE.
Anyway, I started boycotting paying for music when I had gotten several cassettes and noticed I really only wanted one or two songs off the things. I started even boycotting live music when the price of a ticket got to what was for me ridiculous levels, switched to "local" music at local smaller venues. I was in the mega concert biz a bit, I saw what the waste and greed did to people, it was wasteful and greedy, that's why humans have those words. Those industries are chock full top to bottom of coker and booze addled people who all got this paranoid delusion of grandeur that they are all worth this totally absurd amount of money. top to bottom and sideways. Ridiculous levels of money. The producers, the middleman, the pressers, the pr firms, the "stars" you name it, out to lucn on believing they are really worth these sums. Paranoid Delusions of Grandeur, expectations that they got some "right" to profits at obscene levels. Screw them!
The big names ain't worth it, the big middleman companies that constitute this business ain't worth it. IF they can cut their expectations down on what THEY think they are worth, and ALSO make it dog squat easy and simple for people to be able to preview and buy indivdual songs CHEAPLY AND EASILY, they wouldn't have any problems and would actually make MORE money than what they are making now.
Frankly, those people are just plain STUPID if they can't see this. VCRs haven't "killed" the movie industry, even though this was claimed. Cassettes didn't "kill" the music industry. The xerox machine didn't "kill" the book industry. Web forums where articles are discussed hasn't killed the online news business. What all these things HAVE done is to point out COMPLETELY unreasonable expectations of "profit" that some people get, figures they pick right out of their asses, then they DEMAND to get that profit. People deserve SOME profit from their work, everyone and their cuzzin leroy who is an "artiste" and their middle man skimmers DON'T need to be millionaires from these "efforts". If people really thought this stuff was worth it, they would pay for it happily.
It's the same with writingbooks, software writing,painting pictures, whatever. If people got over this sheer greed, they could see this. The "music industry" as it's run at the top by the corps who use the riaa as their front mouth piece need to buy a MUCH cheaper clue. What they are seeing is a righteous BACKLASH to entire generations of people getting ripped off by being charged way more than what this stuff is really worth, and now that the tech exists to SHOW what it's worth, they just need to deal with it. How their dollar gets divvied up with 'the artistes" is for them to figure out, don't ask the customer to do it! If these 'artistes' think it's ok to sign away their rights for cheap,that's their business.
EVERYONE works hard at their jobs, I don't see it written in stone everywhere that because you are such and such you can just DEMAND to be a millionaire. And by the RIAA controlling the so called "public" airwaves through graft and payola, by conspiring to keep cds artifically inflated in price, by all their other monopolistic practics based on GREED, they finally got the people fighting back and SHOWING them what their products are worth. 10 songs on a cd AREN'T WORTH 15$. They are worth MAYBE 10 cents apiece, something like that. Because they never were content with making a living, and instead conspired to have inflated paychecks, people revolted, used technology, and this is what the market can bear now. It's the RIAA and MPAA and the "artistes" they represent who NEED TO BUY A CLUE, and knock it off with extravagant millionaire lifestyles and false expectations for their "work".
I so DETEST both those industries that I watch very few movies, I stopped going to the movies, I stopped going to expensive live concerts and stopped buying pre-packaged music a long time ago,with the exceptions of already produced and used discs or tapes, and that's it, because the dollar I pay for a used tape or cassette or disk is ALL that "entertainment" is really worth.
And ditto professional sports for that matter.